


Where You Hang Your Hat

by A Kiss of Fire (TigerDragon), Bright_Elen



Series: Prerogative of the Brave [3]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/A%20Kiss%20of%20Fire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times had Kurt wished he was strong enough, secure enough to fight back? How many times had he wished for a family of his own? Set seven years after the events in A Degree of Hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You Hang Your Hat

“....eighteen, nineteen, twenty! Ready or not, here I come!”  The boy’s voice was buoyant and his yellow eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement and affection as he crept around the circus’s campsite, making a show of looking hard. The afternoon light filtered through an overcast sky, lighting the lull after the heavy set-up work had been done and before the preparation for the night’s show began.

“Oh, Linda! Where are you? Could she be...here?” He made an exaggerated pounce into a shadow between two train cars and gave an equally overblown groan of disappointment. “Not here! Oh, where could she be?”

A poorly-muffled giggle erupted from behind the feed crates stacked to the boy’s right; his elvin ears pricked towards the sound, and he smiled to himself as he fruitlessly searched two more possible hiding spots before beginning moving to the crates.

Just as he lifted a panel of canvas from the top crate, a tiny creature leaped out at him.

“Found me!” A grinning blonde girl threw herself into the boy’s arms, who laughed and stepped back under her weight, pronged tail held out to compensate for the shift in balance. “Your turn to hide, Kurt.”

“Okay, my turn.”  The boy gently deposited the girl on the ground and ruffled her hair. “You stay here and count to...”

Staring at something happening behind the child, the smile slid off Kurt’s features as he trailed off. He gave a troubled look to the girl.

“Linda, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to take my turn later. I need to go take care of something.”  

The girl became very quiet and looked over her shoulder. Darting a nervous look back at Kurt, she nodded, swallowing.

“You go find Emmeline, yes? You can help her wash up. You’re such a big girl now.” The girl nodded, the lie of Kurt’s smile apparent to them both.

As Linda trotted back to the washerwoman, Kurt strode forward.  Everything soft and warm of his scuttled inside, the wishes and affections and sorrow locking up his heart behind them.  His walk lost the bounce it had had only moments before, and his blank expression made him look unreal.

A large, drunk man stood with his beefy arms planted on the side of a train car to either side of a young woman in a flowing skirt.  “...and you will see, I can be good to you and the girl. I can get you nice things, pretty things.”

Her head was turned away from Kurt, but her body language, and the bruise already forming on her arm, told him all he needed to know.

The woman shifted, turned her face to the drunkard, forced a smile. “That sounds lovely, Guiseppe, but you don’t need to worry about us...”

With a suddenness, the man pounded the metal of the car right next to the woman’s ear, making her cringe. “Do not tell me no, woman! No one says no to me!”

Somewhere, Kurt felt fear and anger. Sadness, to see Linda and her mother at the mercy of such a man. But those feelings weren’t here, not when he was empty. When he was quiet inside, only whispered echoes of his emotions reached him. 

The man pulled back his arm to strike the woman, and Kurt leaped into the air and twisted. Before the blow landed, the boy appeared in the space next to the woman and grabbed her hand. With a rush of air and smoke-like swirls of darnkess, both disappeared and reappeared across the campsite.

The woman stumbled, falling to a crouch, and Kurt hunched forward, hands on his knees, breathing fast. The effort of the shared jump had cracked the boy’s calm, and he felt sensation leaking back in. From across the campsite they heard a dull impact followed by Guiseppe’s angry yells.  The walls shattered, and Kurt was a scared fourteen-year-old boy again.

When he looked back to the woman, he saw her face pale, lips compressed. “You should go, Anna,” he said, sweaty and beginning to shake. “Go around the long way. He’ll forget if he doesn’t see you before the show.”

The woman got to her feet, glaring. “Don’t you _ever_ move me like that again!” She stood eye to eye with him, almost spitting with rage. “Don’t you _dare_ ever touch me again!”  She was stalking away now, unsteady after the teleportation.  “And stay away from my daughter, demon.”

Crestfallen, he couldn’t find words to ask her to change her mind. As he watched her stalk away, he heard Guiseppe’s rage getting closer. He darted into the shadows between the tents and crates, animal cages, trailers, train cars.  He’d have to hide until the beginning of the show and he needed to find a good place before the drunk caught up with him.

***

Kurt sat almost motionless on the top of a train car, watching the crowd stream out of the performance area after the show. The Hungarians had, so far, been a good audience, engaged and relatively forgiving. He much preferred the good people of Hungary to the Italians, who’d thrown things at him for laughs.  

Ducking as Guiseppe staggered back to his own camp, Kurt held his breath, wincing as his abused abdominal muscles protested the contraction. He’d been unable to completely avoid the brute before the performance. He was lucky that it was a show night and Vincent needed him agile and presentable.

As the author of his caution lumbered into the night, Kurt let out his breath and rolled over on to his back, looking up a the stars. They were muted by the lights of the city and the camp, but still he had a good view. He found Polaris and thought idly about the strange fortune-teller who’d taught it to him. He didn’t know the names of any other stars.

“It’s a lovely night, isn’t it?”

Kurt found himself upright in less than a second, crouched and ready to flee. The voice had come from behind the train car, on the side away from the crowds. He peered over cautiously.

A woman in a long coat stood with her back to the car, sharp cheekbones tipped up towards the sky.  She wasn’t looking at him, but not in the usual way people didn’t look at him. It seemed more like she was simply enjoying the view of the heavens and would get to him in good time.

Kurt sat there, at the edge of the car, taking stock of the situation. The woman was no one he’d seen before, or remembered seeing, anyway. Why was she there? He ran a list of possibilities through his head, but none fit exactly right. After a long moment, he spoke, voice barely audible.

“Who are you?”

The woman turned to face him. He was astonished to see that the look on her face didn’t change at all. “A kinswoman.”

Kurt tensed, his heart fluttering painfully before anger bared his teeth. “I have no family,” he whispered harshly. “Go away.”

The woman stepped back from the car and pulled something out of her coat pocket.  Kurt’s nostrils flared and, exhausted as he was, made ready to teleport.  Sensing his alarm, his strange visitor extended her arm slowly and opened her hand, a round object resting on her palm. She simply held it there for a moment, and the boy felt his tension diminish.

“We are family of a different sort,” she told him, and the object in her hand rose up into the air with no visible means of support.  When it was at Kurt’s eye level it stopped, hovering, and he could see that it was a simple steel ball one or two inches in diameter. His eyes widened, and he looked down at the woman with a new intensity.

“Watch,” she told him, her hand turning slightly, and before his eyes, the floating sphere changed. It softened, seemed to melt, ridges appearing and deepening on the surface. The boy gasped softly as the metal took the form of a flower, stem elongating out from the blossom, curled petals opening gently. Tiny bumps emerged from the stem, flattened and sharpened to thorns, and then the rose floated gently forward, close enough for Kurt to touch it.

With a glance down to the stranger--whose lips were quirked in a tiny smile--he grasped the sculpture in his wide fingers. It was hot to the touch but not enough to burn, and as he turned it to catch the low light a look of barely-restrained wonder bloomed on his face.

“How did you do that?”

The stranger smiled. “I control metal,” she said as if discussing a circus trick. She paused, watching the boy’s face. “You are quite gifted yourself, Kurt.”

All the emotion drained from his face and he was empty again. He put the rose aside and fixed the woman with a flat look, not bothering to ask how she knew his name. “Am I.”

“You are.” She affirmed, spreading her gloved hands as if she might have raised them to make a point and then checking herself.  Afraid of spooking him, perhaps. “Astonishing, Kurt, is the only word for you. Your potential is enormous. You are much too important to waste on performances and tricks.”

Cold eyes searched her face. “And what purpose do you plan for my amazing potential?”

The woman gave the tiniest of approving smiles. “To be ready. To know yourself, your abilities, your choices. There are others like us - soon, perhaps, as uncountably many as the stars - and I will fight to keep them safe. If you choose, I hope you will join me in that, but I do not ask it. Only hope.”

Another moment passed as the boy considered this. There was too much experience in that young elfin face - too much, and harder than it should have been. “Join you. You want me to come with you,” he said flatly. “Who are you with? And where?”

“My family runs a school in the United States for young people like yourself.”

He picked up the rose, eyes roving without urgency. Something fluttered against the inside of his armor. “That is very far. I should go with a stranger across an ocean because she makes a pretty flower?”

“No. You should cross the ocean because even though we’ve never met before tonight there is a place waiting for you, Kurt. A place where no one will beat you or spit on you. Where no one will make you afraid.” Her eyes burned, as though the green in them was hot flame struggling to burn away the brown impurities and sear out across the world in one great wildfire. “You are beautiful, Kurt, and one day you will be strong and quick enough that when you see someone lash out at the weak or the helpless or the innocent you will not have to fear for yourself. Others - the ones who would do such things to our kind, all across the world - will learn to fear you.” She took a breath, as if to catch the words back - or perhaps to forestall some other words that might finally set the air alight - and turned her face away from a moment. Her hands flexed at her sides. When she looked back at him, there was a soft edge of sadness to her face. “Forgive me, Kurt. That choice - all of the choices - should be yours to make. My crusade is not yours, and the sanctuary I am trying to offer is not contingent on it. It never will be. Safety is your birthright, no more and no less.”

The steel rose in hand, he listened, expression unchanging. A murmur arose in the back of his mind and threatened to break his calm. “How long do I have to decide?”

“Tonight, if you wish to leave with me. I do not have much time - only enough to watch you a little, and to decide that I could offer you this. If you cannot decide so soon, I will leave you a name and a telephone number - someone you can reach, who can convey you to us.” She caught the widening of his eyes, and spread her hands again - lifting them fully this time, almost in pleading. “I cannot stay longer. I wish that I could, but the train by which I will travel leaves tomorrow and if I wish to take you with me then that is the route I must take. I often pass by less obvious routes, but always alone. It would not be safe, otherwise.”

He nodded once and in a fluid motion leaped to the ground, landing in a graceful crouch a few feet from the woman. “Give me the information. I might meet you in the morning,” he said, standing. “I might not.”

She took a small metal box from her pocket, offering it to him with one gloved hand. “The card is inside. The combination is 7464.” A turn of her hand showed him the number lock at the base of it. “I will be on platform seven until 9:45.”

His blue fingers brushed hers as he took the box and slid it into his pocket, and still he saw no trace of fear or revulsion in her face. Perhaps there was something to her offer.

He held the rose out to her.  “It is very beautiful.”

“It is a gift. Keep it.” She reached out and took his hand, folding it back across the flower, and her eyes held his unflinchingly. “There is one other thing I would like you to see, before you decide.” She slipped another metal box - this one larger and slim, in the fashion of a wallet of a purse - from her jacket and held it out to him. There was no sign of a seam in its smooth sides, and yet it parted as smoothly as the flower had opened to expose an interior of leather and plastic in which, on either side, were set a pair of photographs.

On the left was a scene of two people playing chess. With her hand on a bishop the stranger smirked deviously at her laughing partner, a handsome man in his thirties. They looked very happy and very much in love. A faint feeling of wistfulness thrummed behind Kurt’s shields.

“Your family?” he asked.  

“Yes. My husband and his sister.”

His eyes flicked to the picture on the right, to the sister, and his breath caught. It showed a naked woman reclining on a sofa and smiling sleepily at the camera. Despite the familial connection it wasn’t her nudity that arrested him--due to the close quarters of a performer’s life, he had seen most of the women of the circus in nothing or next to it. Yet he had never seen anything like the woman in the picture, except perhaps in the mirror.

Even in the shadows of the train, Kurt could see that the woman’s skin was blue, a cobalt blue almost the same shade as his own. Darker spots -- scales? -- swirled along her body in ridges and whorls from head to toe. Her bare curves brought a tangle of desire pounding against the barrier of silence in his head, but it was the shades and patterns of her inhuman skin that threatened to captivate him. Tearing his gaze from her body, he looked closer at her face, and the woman’s smile seemed more comfortable and satisfied than Kurt could ever remember being, especially in front of a camera.

His armor split open and a dozen feelings swarmed him, hope and pain and desire and fear all warring on his face. He sucked in a breath and closed the picture box, handing it back to the woman almost roughly.

“Thank you for the rose,” he said, voice choked. “Good night.” With that, he turned and walked swiftly away towards the edge of camp and his tent.

He was lost enough in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice Guiseppe - sodden with drink and limping badly - coming toward him until they were practically face to face. Reflexive fear nearly threw him into a wild jump to escape the reach of those powerful arms, but his own burst of panic was a candle to the flame of raw fear that burned all the color from the strongman’s face and set him staggering wildly down the path, screaming that he’d done nothing and wouldn’t do anything ever again. His limp gave way before he’d quite gotten out of sight, and he collapsed to the ground sobbing in terror like a child.

Kurt stared, mildly shocked, and then the woman’s words came back to him.   _‘_ _The ones who would do such things to our kind will learn to fear you.’_  Eyes wide, he started edging away from the scene.  

Once he was rolled in his sleeping bad in his small, raggedy tent, he let out a long breath and shivered. The stranger had hurt Guiseppe and scared him bad enough to make him run from the boy subordinate to almost everyone in the circus. It frightened Kurt to know that she could and would do such things, but it also stoked a long-dormant righteous anger sitting in his belly. How many times had he wished he was strong enough, secure enough to fight back?

Turning the flower in his hands, he thought of the family that the woman had showed him. She wasn’t all steel and threats. How many times had he wished for a family of his own?

The questions wheeled through his mind as he sank, exhausted, into sleep.

***

He’d been eating sweet cakes with the blue woman in a garden of steel flowers when Vincent shook him roughly awake. “Get up, boy. Go clean the stalls.” He shimmied out of the sleeping bag, surreptitiously tucked the rose and the box into his pockets, and was on his feet before he was really awake.

Before he got to the camel pens, little Linda darted across his path. A bright smile lit up her face. “Hello, Kurt!” She chirped.

“Good morning, little one,” he smiled. She kept pace with him and chatted amiably with him about the day. Just as he was picking up a shovel and bucket, a sharp voice pierced their good-natured conversation.

“Linda! Come here!” Kurt turned to see Anna glaring holes into his head. The little girl got a worried look on her face.

“I thought I told you to stay away from her.” The contempt in Anna’s voice grated down the boy’s spine.

He reflexively opened his mouth to apologize, but the words didn’t come. He stood staring the woman in the eye, watching her become increasingly discomfited.

“Actually, Anna, you don’t need to worry about me,” he said, pressing the shovel and bucket into her hands before she could refuse. She took a breath to fuel her indignation but before she could begin, Kurt had turned back to Linda.  He knelt to take her in his arms.

“I’m going away,” he told her. “I’m going to America.” A surprised frown creased the girl’s face.

“I want you to stay here,” she said.

“I will miss you too, Linda.” Kurt told her. “I’ll send you a postcard, yes?” He kissed her forehead. “You take care of yourself and your mother.”

Swallowing, the girl nodded. Kurt patted her curls, stood in a smooth motion, and gave a jaunty wave to Anna. “Goodbye, Anna. Kiss the camels for me.”

He couldn’t help but grin as he walked away to the sound of her spluttering.

***

He approached the station from the tracks side, moving from shadow to shadow, teleporting when he had to avoid cars or people who got too close. He had left his tent and costumes behind, taking only a few personal possessions and dressing to cover as much of his skin as possible. It had been a small pleasure to steal Vincent’s hat and coat, and from a distance he looked almost normal.

In a quiet moment between trains entering and leaving the station he darted into the platform area under the big iron-worked roof. He smiled to himself, glad again that most people never looked above them. The noise and smoke of his teleportation were hardly noticeable amid the noise and soot of the trains, and in an instant Kurt was perched on an I-beam directly over Platform Seven.

The stranger who had found him sat on one of the benches near the center of the platform, a paper open in her hands and a hat not unlike his own resting on the bench beside her. She seemed to have only one trunk, settled to the left of the bench, and a small bag on her right which she could easily carry on her shoulder. She wore the same long coat and gloves she had worn the night before, and in the daylight he could see that the suit and skirt she wore under it were finely made and the dark boots tucked under the bench beneath her carefully polished. She could have been a teacher, to look at her, and watching those slender hands turning the pages of newsprint it was hard to believe that she could have put so much fear into as hard a man as Guiseppe. Then he remembered her eyes, and it was not so difficult to believe after all.

The large clock on the wall ticked onward. At 9:30, a train pulled into the platform. People streamed off and at 9:38 the woman folded her paper with three crisp motions, tucked it into her bag, and stood. Glancing around, Kurt swallowed, waiting for a moment when enough heads were turned away. In a rush of smoke and brimstone, he appeared at the woman’s side. A few people blinked, but the woman at his side simply smiled at them blandly and within a few moments the comforting haze of denial settled on their features and they ignored him.

“I never thought I would go to America.”

She smiled subtly at that, casually taking a long scarf from around her neck and offering it to him with a gloved hand. When the man checking tickets asked for her papers she handed him a pair of passports, and Kurt recognized the familiar dip of the man’s hand into his pocket as he palmed the money inside. It must have been a very generous bribe, because he handed both passports back without so much as glancing at the pictures and offered her a smile that was positively obsequious. “All in order. May I help any further?”

She smiled casually, waving her hand to draw his attention more firmly to her and away from Kurt. “A private dining booth, if you please, and a room in the sleeper car. That will be quite sufficient.”

“Of course.” He stood aside to let her pass, gesturing down the hallway, and she swept past him with the easy arrogance of a woman used to such treatment. Only when they were well down the narrow, badly lit corridor leading to the dining car did she seem to relax, and she even offered him a small smile when they settled into the half-enclosed booth.

“Remarkable, what money can do.” She picked up the menu, studied it a moment, then pushed it across the table to him. “When I first went to America, it was with my husband. I did not expect to stay, but it is his home and I found a great deal to do there. It is a beautiful place, filled with people who do not know how fortunate they are. Sometimes I miss living among a more practical people.”

Kurt settled uneasily in his seat, eyes darting at the people passing their booth, posture careful. “And you are from Germany too, Frau.....?” He trailed off, a little stricken to realize he was running away with someone whose name he didn’t even know. Still, even with that, even with how much he would miss Linda and the delighted astonishment of the audience, leaving wasn’t exactly a hard decision.  He almost wished it had been.

“Lehnsherr was my father’s name. Xavier is my husband’s. Most of my students call me by the former - out of habit, as much as anything.” Her lips curved in a faint, fond smile, before a sadness chased the warmth away. “I have not called Germany home in a very long time, Kurt, though that is where I was born.”

“Why did you leave?” he ventured quietly. “To live with your husband?”

She tilted her head, her lips pulling back over her teeth in a dry half-smile that added twenty years to the look of her age. “A painter from Austria decided to try to kill every last one of my family, Kurt. I was very fortunate that he did not kill me, as well. I promised myself I would never, ever let it happen again. At first I did it by hiding - I traveled to England, where I hid, and lived there for a number years before I met Charles and came to America. Now I do it in what I hope very much are better ways.”

“Oh.” The boy looked stricken. He wanted to apologize or at least offer sympathy, but Frau Lehnsherr-Xavier quietly carried more power than anyone he had ever met and it seemed almost ludicrous that anything he could say would be right or enough. He shifted in his seat, and filled the silence with one of the many questions buzzing in his head.

“How many others are at your school? What are their gifts, their mutations?”

“We have several older graduates - now teachers in their own right - as well as a bit more than a dozen current students. Young Mister Proudstar, for instance, is nearly strong enough to lift a small car and quite capable of shrugging off any punch your strongman friend could have given him. He is also quick enough to catch a fly by the wings, which makes keeping him from becoming restless in class a bit of a challenge.” Her lips twitched in a wry smile. “Mister Summers has taken to giving him small puzzles to work on between math problems, which seems to be working. When he doesn’t lose patience and break them, of course. I think you’ll like John - he’s only two years older than you are.”

Kurt nodded, enthralled despite his caution, although that was melting away at the thought of an entire school filled to bursting with marvels undreamed of in the circus. She caught the glow in his eyes, smiled, and in the next three hours she only broke off telling him about the Xavier School for the Gifted once - long enough to order them both a substantial meal.

***

As the Lincoln pulled into the mansion’s garage, Kurt fussed with the scarf covering his face, tucking it more securely under his hat. After four days of travel he was tired and wary, the more so for the increased scrutiny of the so-called Free World, where a bribe was not the universal language of permission. With the palm-greasing and several kinds of private transportation Frau Lehnsherr had hired, the boy could only guess how much it had cost the Xaviers to bring him to their school.

His new benefactor gave him a nod as they climbed out of the car. Mister Summers locked the vehicle and opened the trunk. Instead of hefting Frau Lehnsherr’s trunk for her like he had at the airport, he simply waited as the trunk lifted itself out. It followed the woman out of the garage, across a gravel path, and into a side door of the enormous building.

Kurt held back, hesitating at the threshold.

Mr. Summers held the door for him, giving him an encouraging smile. “Yeah, I know it’s intimidating,” he said. “You get used to it.”

Swallowing, the boy came inside, marveling at the scale of the place and the rich furnishings. Frau Lehnsherr was standing at the foot of a paneled staircase, smiling as the man from the picture strode down the the steps and enthusiastically wrapped her in his arms. She grabbed him almost fiercely with a look of joy on her usually stern features.

After a moment they disengaged, and Xavier smiled and extended a hand to the teleporter. Kurt’s English wasn’t fantastic, but he could understand the man perfectly well.

“Welcome to our school, Kurt. I’m so glad you came.”

The teleporter smiled shyly behind the scarf.  “I too am glad, Mister Xavier.”

Xavier showed him his room, then, and the rest of the school: classrooms, gymnasium, kitchen and dining room, recreation room, library, gardens and fields. There were a few students here and there, all happy to meet him. They were curious, too, darting glances under his hat and obviously wanting to see what he looked like. It was a bit overwhelming and he was glad to have some time to himself before dinner. His distress seemed to be apparent, for by the time they had returned to the entryway, Mr. Xavier had sent all the other students to other parts of the mansion.

Kurt stood in the room that was now, strangely, his. The size, comfort and emptiness of it disconcerted him, and so he left to explore other areas. Eventually he found himself sitting in the lower branches of a huge elm planted next to the garage. He had a nice view of the mansion and the grounds.  He had never been to such a rich house.

An hour later a small red car pulled into the garage.  Soon a blonde woman emerged from the door, and before Kurt’s astonished eyes a sort of wave rippled over her. Before she had reached the door to the mansion her skin was utterly bare and completely blue. Frau Lehnsherr’s picture had not prepared him for how striking she was in person.

His soft gasp stopped her short, and she turned, finding his eyes instantly.

“You must be Kurt.” She waited. His heart sped up.

“Are you coming down, or should I go up?” She smiled at her own question, and before he could get his limbs to obey him, she had gracefully vaulted into the tree and swiftly climbed to Kurt’s height, resting on a branch near his own.  He stared.

“Call me Mystique,” she told him, reaching for his hand.

“Ah, er, nice to meet you,” he wavered.  He gingerly took her hand, her scales cool against his palm. She smiled, teeth so white behind blue lips.

“So, what do you think of the place so far?” she asked, reclining on her branch.

Kurt swallowed. “It is very...fine, very nice. The people seem nice,” he offered. “I suppose I thought I would feel less...different.”

Mystique sat up and leaned forward. “Some of them get it, some of them don’t,” she said, plucking off Kurt’s hat, graceful hands brushing fine strands of black hair away from his face. “What it’s like to look so different.” Unwinding his borrowed scarf, she handed him both it and the hat. “But whatever you have to do out there to survive, here you can leave it at the door.” Suddenly she shook her head, smiling in wonder. “You’re beautiful, you know,” she told him. “You’re amazing.”

A rush of blood turned Kurt’s cheeks to a darker blue and he looked away, shifting on his branch. He heard a small sigh and a rustle of leaves, and then Mystique was calling to him from the gravel path.

“I’ll see you at dinner, okay? Us blue people have to stick together.”

“Okay.”  His blush lasted for several minutes after he watched her disappear inside the mansion. He sat sitting in the tree, thinking, disguise held loosely on his lap.

When the time came for the evening meal, he teleported to his room first. When he left, the hat and scarf were lying neatly on the bed.


End file.
